;0 381 
LP7 
opy 1 






A PAPER ON FORESTRY. 



By HON. JOHN D. LYMAN, 
Exeter, N. H. 



[Reprinted from Report of State Board of Agriculture. "] 



CONCORD: 

REPUBLICAN PRESS ASSOCIATION. 
1897. 



A PAPER ON FORESTRY. 



By HON. JOHN D. LYMAN, 
■I 

Exeter, N. //. 



[Reprinted from Report of State Board of Agriculture.^ 



CONCORD: 

REPUBLICAN PRESS ASSOCIATION. 
1897. 






111 KXQh, 



A PAPER ON FORESTRY. 



BY HON. JOHN D. I.YMAN, EXETER, N. H. 



I intend in this paper to further, but briefly, illustrate and 
enforce a few fundamental principles of forestry of which I 
have before treated. I am encouraged to do this by the num- 
ber of groves which I see have been attended to in various and 
widely-separated sections of the state since this effort in behalf 
of foiestry was commenced ; and by the invitations I receive to 
lecture upon the subject ; and letters requesting copies of my 
paper upon forestry, published in the last report of the Board 
of Agriculture (my three hundred extra copies are exhausted) ; 
and of letters inquiring for information upon certain points. 
These letters come not only from this and other New Eng 
land states, but from the central and western. 

B. E. Fernow, chief of the division of forestry under our 
government, says that " the total annual product of wood 
material of all sorts consumed in the United States may be 
valued, in round numbers, at one billion ($1,000,000,000) dol- 
lars, or, roughly speaking, twenty-five billion (25,000,000,000) 
cubic feet of wood, the annual increase of five hundred million 
acres of forest in fair condition. This value exceeds ten times 
the value of our gold and silver output and three times the 
annual product of all our mineral and coal mines put together. 
It is three times the value of our wheat crop, exceeds the gross 
income of all the railroads and transportation companies, and 
would more than wipe out the remaining public debt of the 
United States." (See Bulletin No. 5.) One of the most 
marked distinctions between the enlightened and the savage 
peoples is, that the latter depend almost entirely upon the spon- 
taneous, wild production of nature for their food and clothing, 
while the former assist nature, and by this means increases the 



•4 

food and clothing materials thousands of folds. Instead of 
having herds and flocks of domestic animals, our Indians 
depended upon the wild animals for their meats, and chiefly 
upon acorns, nuts, and roots, with fish, for their other foods^ 
and upon skins, grasses, and bark, instead of cotton, wool, silk, 
and linen, for their clothing. Although the present territory 
of the United States had three kinds of native apples, I am not 
aware that any Indian ever conceived the idea of having an 
orchard or of improving the fruit. Although plums, currants, 
strawberries, and other delicious fruits, grew wild in small 
quantities in the few open places, yet we are not aware that 
our Indians ever conceived the idea that they could increase 
the quantity or quality of these fruits by assisting nature. They 
plucked or slew what grew wild, and submitting to their fate, 
starved when nature's limited supply was exhausted. It 
took a great many acres of land to support one Indian and all 
New Hampshire supported but a few thousand. 

Now, while we assist nature, and by so doing produce farm 
crops and domestic herds and flocks that would have as- 
tonished the most enlightened nations of the world a few 
years ago by their abundance and quality, yet we, strange to 
say, savage-like, depend upon unassisted nature to produce our 
wood and timber. We utterly discard the theory, in general, 
of the savages in regard to depending upon unassisted nature to 
grow our needed supplies of food and clothing materials, but 
when we come to the needed supplies of timber, we, like the 
Indians as to other crops, depend upon unassisted nature. 
Just as though man cannot grow a timber tree as well as he 
can grow an ear of corn ! Just as though he must let ninety- 
and-nine worthless trees occupy his land to each valuable one ! 
Just as though he must let worthless weed-trees like the little 
red cherry, grey birch, alder, and the like, cover his grounds 
instead of the white pine, the oaks, the chestnut, the ash, and 
other valuable trees ! Just as though he must let his old fields 
and pastures be partially covered by the worthless, scattering, 
limby white pines instead of planting the seed and growing 
this, the most majestic of our trees, in its perfection and great 
value ! Just as though man has not the wit and wisdom to 



mould and shape the tree, when it is growing, as easily as the 
potter moulds the clay ! Just as though he cannot dictate to 
his lands whether they shall grow the wortliless or the valua- 
ble trees, just the same as he can dictate to them whether they 
shall grow weeds or grain ! 

To illustrate, if you have forty young white pines growing at 
equal distances from each other on an acre of land, you will 
grow forty wide-spreading limby and nearly worthless trees. 
If you have ten thousand young pines of the same age on an 
acre and let them all remain, you wait nearly a century to get 
trees of the proper size for fence poles. Careful measurements 
and counting of annual rings, by Austin Carey, Esq., show 
that the spruces, six inches in diameter, four feet from the 
ground, in our old forests average about one hundred years 
of age. If you judiciously thin the acre of thick pines from 
time to time, you will by the time they are from fifty to 
seventy-five years of age have the trees average from three 
hundred feet to five, six, or even seven hundred feet of inch- 
boards. And if you carefully prune oft' the limbs as fast as 
they die, and in some instances a little faster, your butt logs 
will be entirely free from knots, except very small ones very 
near the heart. If you do not prune young trees even the butt 
logs will generally be pretty full of black knots, which all know 
greatly diminish the price and the value of lumber for many 
purposes. I find white pine boards in our village, selling 
from eight dollars for a thousand feet of inch-boards to sixty 
dollars per thousand feet. There is no reason why you cannot at 
an expense of about one and a half cents to a tree, prune young 
trees which you select to let stand for saw-logs, so that the 
butt-logs will make perfectly clear stuff to within two inches 
or less of the heart. I have known dead pine limbs, not much 
larger than a pipe stem, to remain on a tree some fifty years, 
causing a black knot in all the boards on that side of the tree, 
to near the heart. 

White pine limbs reach to the heart of the tree, as they start 
at top of the tree from buds, and as long as the limbs are 
alive they make red and fast knots, but when the limbs die 
the body of the tree grows yearly out over the dead, black 



limbs the thickness of the annual growth of the tree, and the 
knots are black and frequently loose from near the point where 
the limbs die. 

This very important fact should be kept in mind, viz., that 
thick young forests will grow more cords of wood, whether 
the wood be in lumber or in fuel trees, by being properly 
thinned than they will by letting them go unthinned. The 
more you cut out in thinning, up to a certain point, the larger 
and more profitable will be your timber crop and the sooner 
fit to cut. The same is true of a wood crop. 

This has been demonstrated by repeated experiments. All 
farmers know that they may have their corn, potatoes, grain, 
or grass so thickly seeded that the crop will be small. It is 
the same with the timber crop. Either too many or too few 
stalks of corn or number of trees to the acre diminishes the 
quantity of the crop. But there is this very important differ- 
ence to be observed in the growing of a crop of corn and a crop 
of timber. In growing corn and other farm crops we start the 
crops with about the number of plants we expect to mature, 
while to grow a crop of good timber we should start with a 
great many moi'e trees to the acre than we intend to grow to 
timber size. 

This picture (see Fig. i) shows the form of the pine, spruce 
or hemlock wlien grown in open land. 

The second pictiu'e (see Fig. 2) is of pines, which have 
grown from seed sown on poor plains, and they stand so 
close together that they are growing very slowly. They need 
to be thinned, and those selected to be grown into large trees 
should have their dry limbs removed. These trees have not 
green limbs enough instead of a surplus to be removed. The 
man who sowed the seed from which these pines, represented 
in the second picture, grew, died in 1883, and it is believed 
that he sowed their seed about 1870, and yet these pines, 
with the exception of those on the outside, average far less 
than the size of common fence stakes. 

The pines shown in the third picture (see Fig. 3) are be- 
lieved to be younger than those shown in the second picture ; 
but their far larger size and greater thriftiness are readily 




FIG. I. THIS IS A BLACK SPKl'CK AND SHOWS THE FORM OF 

THE PINES, SPRUCES AND HEMLOCK WHEN 

(iROWN IN THE OPEN. 




FIG. 2. UNTHINNED WHITE PINES SOWN BY OMAE PEASE 
ABOUT 1870. 




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FIG. 4. NATURAL UNPKUNED PINES WHICH DID NOT COME 
UP THICK ENOUGH. 




lie. 5. PINES ABOUT SIX INCHES IN DIAMETER WHICH 
HAVE BEEN THINNED AND PRUNED. 




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noticed. They stiiiid on poor, high, dry land, but they have 
been thinnetl and pruned two or more times, and are conse- 
quently growing fast, and their butt logs, when sawed, will not 
be found full of black knots. Can any one look at the last two 
pictures and not be convinced of the advantages of thinning to 
increase the rate of growth, and of pruning to improve the 
quality? 

The fourth picture (see Fig. 4) is of pines which did not 
stand so far apart as to be worthless, like the bushlike tree 
represented in the first picture, nor yet close enough together 
to make good timber. Some half a dozen years ago the axe- 
men cut oft' the low limbs as far up as they could reach, which 
did little good save to make them look a little better. They 
stand on good land for pines, have grown rapidly, and will 
make rough, coarse, cheap lumber. Had these trees come up 
thick, and been properly thinned and pruned, the lumber 
would have been much more valuable. 

The fifth picture (see Fig. 5) poorly represents pines about 
thirty years from the seed. They have been thinned and 
pruned. They are about forty-five feet in height, and their 
live limbs cover half or a little more of the length of their 
bodies. They are thrifty and handsome, and are growing high- 
priced timber. At sixty years of age I judge there will be fifty 
thousand feet of boards to the acre, and the butt logs of excel- 
lent quality. 

The sixth picture (see Fig. 6) is of pines on the same aban- 
doned farm, and standing near those represented in the fourth 
picture, and like them, are about fifty years of age. They 
came up very thick, and were entirely neglected till about 
twenty-four years ago, since which time they have been 
thinned and pruned several times. They average a little over 
thirteen inches in diameter four feet from the ground, and are 
from sixty-five to eightv feet in height. The cutting and saw- 
ing of sample trees convinces me that there is stout fifty thous- 
and feet of timber to the acre. The quality is good, but the 
butt logs will not be clear of knots to so near the heart as the 
trees represented in the third and fifth of these pictures, be- 
cause these trees were not pruned when as small as those were. 



THINNING. 



Thin often so as to let the trees selected for standards ever 
have room to grow quite rapidly. Too much sunshine and 
wind must not be let in upon and among the trees at any one 
time by excessive thinning. Be careful to take oft' but few live 
limbs at any one pruning. Except for the expense I would cut 
oft' the live limbs at some distance from the body of the pine, 
and the next year prune these stubs off" close to the tree. This 
prevents all danger of a little collection of turpentine or *■' pitch " 
at the point where the limb is severed from the tree. It is very 
important to have your young trees so thick that you will have 
no large low limbs. In this case the limbs will generally die as 
rapidly as it will be best to prune. I would not object to a 
rule which should read like this, viz. : Have your young trees 
stand so close together that the lower limbs will die as fast as 
the trees will n'eed pruning, so as to have to prune oft' only 
dead limbs. 

I am aware that some people believe that pruning trees pro- 
motes rot, and some millmen have objected to buying trees 
which had been pruned. My father when I was a boy pruned 
half or more of the live limbs at one time, from a pasture pine, 
which had been "• slivered" in several places. The tree grew 
well and its body for some twenty or more feet up to the limbs, 
became some two feet in diameter and very handsome. A 
few years since its top showed signs of decreasing vitality, and 
upon cutting the tree it was found very rotten with the red rot. 
That prince of New Hampshire foresters, Joseph Barnard, 
Esq., reports a case where very considerable rot was reported 
to be found among trees which had been pruned. A news- 
paper writer soine years since, stated that carpenters some- 
times caused timber to rot by sawing it with saws with which 
they had sawed rotten timber ; the germ or the microbe causing 
the decay being conveyed by the saw to the sound timber. Can 
this ever be the case in pruning? A member of the noted 
lumber company at Lisbon, told me that they found the lumber 
from trees which had been pruned sound. Many of my pruned 
trees have been cut and all found sound, and as I stated in the 



9 

last report, I had two pines from vvliich a liuiulred or more limbs 
had been pruned, cut and sawed into boards, and tiiere was not 
a particle of rot in them. I have known instances where live 
Iiml)s have been torn from trees, leaving wounds of greater 
or less length in the body of the tree, and for rot to begin in 
those wounds. A live branch some six inches in diameter was 
cut from a thrifty white pine, and that knot slowly rotted with 
a white rot which extended some two feet down into the tree. 
A fundamental rule in pruning, should be to remove all the 
live limbs, which are to be removed, when they are small, and 
never remove manv live limbs from a tree at any one time. I 
have never known a tree injured by a common sense pruning. 
All have known fruit, shade and timber trees greatly damaged 
by a pruning which reminds one of butchery, and which in a 
lover of the beautiful God-shaped trees required a large amount 
of Christianity to prevent expressions unbecoming a gentleman, 
much more a Christian. Observation and sense are the funda- 
mental qualifications for a forester or a farmer, and if to these 
be added health and industry, fires, or some such occurrences 
as droughts or floods, can alone prevent success, and these are 
not very liable to occur. 

THE GROWING OF TIMBER ON WASTE LANDS. 

The United States census of iSSo states that there were, at 
that time, one hundred and sixteen thousand acres of turned 
out old fields and pastures in this state, producing neither farm 
nor forest crop. The amount of such idle land is believed to be 
increasing. This land was originally covered with trees. 
There is no doubt whatever but the most of it is now in good 
condition to grow crops of white pine, and some of it other 
timber trees, at a great profit. A hundred thousand acres of 
this waste land sown to white pine seed and properly cared for, 
would, in from forty to seventy-five years, be worth from one 
hundred to four or five hundred dollars per acre, or somewhere 
from ten to thirty millions of dollars, at present low prices. I 
give a few facts to prove this statement : 



1« 



THE EXPERIMENT OF AUGUSTUS PRATT, MEMBER OF THE 
MASSACHUSETTS BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 

Mr. Pratt, with eight days' work, planted thirteen acres 
of poor land with white pine seed. The land was largely 
covered with blueberry bushes and small weeds. Forty years 
after the planting, he cut from forty to forty-five cords of box- 
board logs to the acre from that land, and sold the logs, deliv- 
ered at mill, for six dollars a cord. The wood brought quite 
a little sum. A cord of boxboard logs is said to average about 
one thousand feet of five-eighths of an inch thick boxboards. 
A great many thousand acres of better land than this lie idle 
in New Hampshire. Why not put it to growing timber.? 
What a neglect of opportunity to enrich both the owners and 
the state ! Mr, Pratt is a member of the Massachusetts board 
of agriculture. 

OMAR PEASE. 

The Shakers of Enfield, Connecticut, possess hundreds of 
acres of poor sand plains, in some few places too poor to sod 
over. Omar Pease, the head of one of the families, conceived 
the idea of covering these plains with white pine. He collected 
the seed during the first days of September, and plowed the 
land and sowed it to rye, and harrowed in the rye. Then he 
sowed broadcast two quarts of white pine seed to the acre, and 
rolled the ground. This course he pursued for several years as 
he was able to procure the pine seed. The number of acres he 
seeded is unknown, as it has never been measured. Judging 
from looks and what I was told, I estimate he seeded nearly two 
hundred acres. I was surprised that on these dry sand plains 
he succeeded every year, but such appears to be the fact. 
Pease died in 18S3, and his successor was unwise enough to 
plow up some forty acres of the youngest pines, then about a 
foot in height, for the purpose of growing rye. The rye failed 
to produce a paying crop and the ground has since lain waste. 
Whether Pease harvested any rye from that sown with his pine 
seed, I could not learn. Pease was, undoubtedly, an observing 
man, and had noticed that a hot sunshine directly upon the 




PINES GROWN FROM SEED SOWN BY OMAR PEASE UPON 
SA.ND BARRENS AND THINNED ONLY IN 1896. 



11 

young pine, the first or second year from the seed, was 
liable to kill it, and hence sowed the rye to shade the pine 
plants. The little weeds and blueberry bushes did the shading 
for Augustus Pratt. Although I give a picture of one place 
where the late sown of the Pease pines are so thick as to 
grow very little, yet most of them are thrifty and gain in height, 
on an average, about eighteen inches a year. Many acres are 
covered with tall beautiful trees, averaging seven or more inches 
in diameter, and from forty to fifty feet in height. To John 
W. Copley, manager for the Third family, I am indebted 
for much attention and information. He and the head of the 
Enfield Shakers readily agreed with me as to the great advan- 
tage of thinning, and, although they had never seemed to have 
thought of thinning before, they set about it at once, and on 
my second visit I found that they were thinning their trees 
and were greatly pleased with the operation. They were get- 
ting much wood and fencing. 

They felt sure that with locusts from their plantation of that 
tree, for stakes, and with wire for pins instead of withes, they 
could, with the pine poles cut out in thinning, make a fence that 
would stand forty years without repairing. If any of the poles 
were a little too sappy, they would slightly hew them on two 
sides. If all the owners of cheap and waste lands in our state 
could just look upon the barren plains of the Shakers, and then 
go into the beautiful pine plantation on just such land adjoining, 
they would no more doubt the practicability of covering our 
cheap and waste lands with timber plantations of great value 
than they would doubt their ability to grow a crop of corn or 
grass on good land. 

I have before written of the success of Mr. Jewell of Win- 
chester, this state, who, in 1849, gathered twelve bushels of 
white pine cones and sowed them broadcast on the grass sod of 
two and a half acres of worn-out pasture land. In 1S91 I found 
this a most beautiful plantation. As I remember them, the trees 
then averaged about sixty-six feet in height and eleven inches 
in diameter four feet from the ground. The cones and the little 
grass saved the young plants from the sunstroke. The seasons 
may have been favorable. 



If 

In several European countries and in southern Asia, trees are 
grown as a crop, and of the kind and size desired. Just think 
of having every tree a valuable one and all of one kind and all 
fit to cut and every butt log perfectly clear, except knots not 
much larger than a pipestem, and these confined to w^ithin one 
and a half or two inches of the heart ! Lumbermen have re- 
cently informed me that boards averaging from twelve to fifteen 
inches in diameter, from such butt logs, would in these days of 
cheap lumber sell for thirty dollars per thousand feet. 

Sow the seed or take proper care of your close-set little pines, 
and it will not be many years before there will be some thirty 
thousand feet of such butt logs to the acre, worth say twenty 
dollars per thousand on the stump, or six hundred dollars be- 
side all the other logs. Do not say that it cannot be done. 
It is entirely practical. Ask Vanderbilt, ask Bismarck, ask 
the Duke of Athol, ask Gladstone, ask any of the real estate 
owning nobility of England, ask any forester in Europe, 
ask the forest schools of the old world — all, all of these 
will assure you that it is one of the easiest things in the world 
to grow timber as a crop, and will be just as positive 
about it as you are that thirty bushels or more of corn can be 
grown on an acre of New Hampshire land. What a 
contrast in lumbering such plantations, compared with break- 
ing an acre of deep snow in the mountains of northern New 
York to get three thousand feet of small, knotty spruce ! Three 
thousand feet per acre is considered the average yield of timber 
per acre in the Adirondack region, by Superintendent Fox, and 
it brings one dollar and a half per thousand feet on the stump. 
Just think of the luxury of cutting a hundred thousand feet of 
first-class white pine, with every butt log clear, and the second 
logs nearly so, from an acre of our cheap lands instead of break- 
ing miles upon miles of roads over many acres of land to get 
that amount of far poorer lumber ! Yet it is entirely practical to 
grow a hundred tliousand feet of excellent white pine timber on 
an acre of land. Comparatively a few years since I knew a 
leading farmer to plow up a few improved strawberry plants 
which his son had set out in the garden. The idea that one 
should think of cultivating strawberries ! They grow wild. 



18 

Just as absurd do many to-day deem tlie growing of timber as 
a crop as did that man of growing strawberries. Timber grows 
wild, they think, and so must grow ! But cultivated strawber- 
ries so supply the market now tiiat probal)ly multitudes have 
no idea that they ever grew wild. This will be the case to a 
great extent with timber. It will be grown and harvested as a 
crop, and land will be seeded to timber trees as it is now seeded 
to grass or planted to corn. 

There appear to be about three million acres of forest land 
in this state, and the annual cut of timber is believed to be about 
one hundred feet of boards per acre on an average, and tlie gen- 
eral belief is that at this rate of cutting, our timber supply will 
soon be exhausted. But when these three million acres shall be 
covered with properly cared for timber trees there may be from 
five to seven times this amount cut yearly and the supply be as 
lasting as the sunshine and rainfall. 

With all the time since the flood to operate in, unassisted 
nature in our White Mountain region shows a crop of about 
five thousand feet of spruce on the average to the acre. As I 
have before stated. Mr. Carey finds by cutting trees and count- 
ing grains, it takes unassisted nature about one hundred years 
to start a spruce in the old forests, and grow it to six inches in 
diameter at four feet from the ground. We think no observant 
woodsman will doubt but that starting spruces in cleared land, 
pretty close together, and properly thinning them from time to 
time as they begin to crowd one another, one could grow these 
trees at least eighteen inches in diameter in the time that unas- 
sisted nature is growing them six inclies in diameter, and a log 

eighteen inches in diameter, it will be remembered, is nine times 

. . . ' . 

as large as one six inches in diameter. Of course, the eighteen 

inch tree would have much more than nine times as much lum- 
ber in it, because it is so much taller. When the spruce vviiose 
yearly rings are shown in one of the illustrations in this paper 
was given space to grow in by having the forest thinned, it 
grew in diameter at the rate of four inches in eleven years, and 
at this rate of growth a spruce one hundred years old would be 
three feet in diameter. At this rate the butt-log would be 
thirty-six times as large as the six inch log. If the trees were 



14« 

properly pruned from time to time, the clear butt-logs of fair 
size on the stump in the Adirondack region would be worth 
from ten to twenty-two dollars a thousand feet while the aver- 
age price of spruce, as has been stated, is only one and one 
half dollars. Counting the grains of a great many spruce 
trees in the Adirondack region, from the heart of the trees 
towards the outside, the number of grains or yearly rings to 
the inch next the heart, was found to vary from fifteen to forty- 
six. But when the trees got to be a foot in diameter, with 
their tops above the surrounding trees, they had only from five 
to twenty-six grains to the inch. Nature in this clearly demon- 
strates the necessity of giving room to the tops of trees. 

The next picture actually represents the exact rate a spruce, 
coming up in an old forest, did grow. You see it was many 
years old before it was three inches in diameter. Then its 
top got above some of the surrounding trees, and it grew faster 
till it became again crowded, and grew very slowly. Then 
these woods were thinned out, and this tree's top gained in 
size with its increased space to grow in, and the tree soon grew 
very fast for a spruce. This tree demonstrated, as much as 
any one tree can demonstrate a general principle, that thinning 
of thick, growing trees is of great importance. 

Reckoning money at four per cent., compound interest, and 
saying nothing of taxes, a plantation growing a crop of timber 
in ninety years is worth when the trees start from the seed, thirty- 
two times as much as a plantation upon which an equally val- 
uable crop is grown in one hundred and eighty years. A good 
crop of white pine for merchantable inch boards can be grown 
in sixty years. For box boards in forty years. Starting with 
the trees thick and properly thinning and pruning, suppose it 
took seventy-two years to grow fifty thousand feet to the acre. 
Then you should have about twenty-five thousand feet of clear 
butt-logs, and the timber on the lot at present prices, would be 
worth about five hundred dollars per acre. Reckoning your 
money to have doubled three times, that is, for each dollar in- 
vested to have become eight dollars, and dividing the five hun- 
dred dollars by eight, and it makes the acre of land as soon as 
the pine seed is in it, worth sixtv-two and a half dollars. The 



1^ 

thinnings, in many localities, for wood, fencing, shingles 
shook, and timber, would be worth quite a sum. I think it, 
safe to say that land upon which such a plantation can be grown 
can be bought in this state for one dollar per acre. But some 
one says this looks well on paper. I agree that it does, and it 
can be made to look better on the land. Even allow one half 
for the difference between theory and practice, and it looks well 
then. A friend of mine has lately taken two thousand dollars 
for the boards and shooks cut upon four acres of uncared for 
sapling white pine judged to be seventy-five years of age. 
The net income was almost three hundred and fifty dollars per 
acre. 

No one who has studied the growth of timber trees, and 
sawed them into lumber, will doubt that the value of this lot of 
timber could have been very much increased by assisting nature 
in the growth of the trees. The butt-logs could have been 
grown clear lumber, and the time taken to grow the trees of the 
size they were when cut, greatly decreased. As money at four 
per cent, doubles in eighteen years, every eighteen years saved 
in the time of growing the timber diminishes its cost by one 
half. Very generally, by assisting nature you can have your 
trees much larger at sixty years of age, than unassisted nature 
would have them at seventy-eight years of age, and besides the 
very important item of taxes, they will have cost you only one 
half as much. To make known the slowness of the growth of 
trees in the old forests, I copy a page of a table from the excel- 
lent report of Hon. William F. Fox, superintendent of the state 
forests of New York, to whom I am under obligation for many 
favors. The same table shows that the few spruces which were 
thirty inches in diameter averaged three hundred and five annual 
rings and those thirteen inches in diameter one hundred and 
seventy-two and seven tenths. As the rings were counted in 
the stumps, which were from thirty inches to three or four feet 
in height, the trees were quite a number of years older than the 
number of rings indicates. A noticeable fact is that the trees 
thirty inches in diameter, which contain about eight times as 
much lumber as those thirteen inches in diameter, are only one 
and a half times as old. This teaches us to keep trees growing 
rapidly. 



17 



A TABLE SHOWING THE GROWTH OF liLACK Sl'KUCE IN 
THE OLD FORESTS OF NORTHERN NEW YORK. 



SPECIMEN 
NUMBER. 



Diameter 

of stump, 
in inches. 



Number of 


Length of 


Diameter 


Number 


rings on 


shaft, in 


at top, 


of rings 


stump. 


feet. 


in inches. 


at top. 


203 


54 


10 


99 


207 


54 


8 


124 


289 


54 


10 


124 


230 


46 


II 


130 


193 


54 


9 


105 


208 


54 


8 


99 


283 


62 


7 


136 


194 


54 


13 


100 


209 


54 


10 


100 


209 


48 


8 


100 


238 


54 


14 


96 


189 


54 


12 


121 


218 


48 


9 


129 


201 


54 


II 


99 


231 


54 


6 


76 


273 


58 


10 


14T 


194 


54 


9 


100 


201 


54 


10 


99 


194 


56 


12 


lOI 


204 


54 


8 


78 


207 


54 


II 


121 


201 


58 


12 


103 


184 


54 


6 


78 


200 


48 


5 


100 


201 


54 


9 


89 


199 


54 


8 


89 


183 


54 


7 


lOI 


^73 


46 


9 


90 


200 


54 


10 


100 


179 


44 


8 


92 


182 


46 


6 


78 


200 


54 


10 


89 


156 


46 


8 


100 


200 


48 


7 


89 


192 


50 


10 


102 


172 


44 


6 


78 


171 


50 


5 


79 


200 


54 


9 


121 


178 


54 


8 


79 


201 


50 


II 


99 


167 


44 


9 


100 


178 


46 


10 


97 


203 


42 


9 


87 


174 


48 


6 


78 


183 


50 


5 


100 


275 


27 


II 


'55 


182 


48 


II 


108 


156 


44 


7 


89 


157 


44 


7 


99 



Total 

height of 

tree 

in feet. 



68 
71 
74 
78 
70 
68 
82 
70 
72 

67 
72 
69 
74 
67 
65 
76 
70 
80 
71 
67 
71 
69 
67 
65 
70 

71 
72 
70 
71 
69 
65 
65 
70 

67 

71 
68 
66 
73 
69 
70 
62 
68 
71 
63 
70 

74 
68 

65 
69 



1» 



SPECIMEN 
NUMBER. 


Diameter 
of stump, 
in inches. 


Number of 
rings on 
stump. 


Length of 

shaft, in 

feet. 


Diameter 

at top, 
in inches. 


Number 
of rings 
at top. 


Total 
height of 

tree, 
in feet. 


212 


14 
14 
14 
14 
14 
13 
13 
13 
13 
13 
13 
13 
13 
13 
13 


200 
145 

161 

182 
176 
180 

157 
150 
200 

138 
162 
172 
192 
200 


54 
40 

50 
48 
42 
48 
36 
42 
28 
44 
40 
34 
27 
38 
44 


9 
II 

12 

4 
6 

7 
8 
10 

4 
6 
8 
7 
9 


78 
88 
98 
103 
99 
35 

76 
102 

59 

87 
103 

96 
137 


64 


2 1 7 


60 


214 


70 


21 C 


67 


2 1 6 


59 


217 


59 


2l8 


61 


2IQ 


57 


220 


'57 


221 


66 


222 


S8 


22"? 


60 


224 


61 


221; 


70 


226 


72 







As people quite often inquire about the difference between 
white and black spruce, I insert pictures of twigs from both, 
with cone and seed. The black spruce is the larger and more 
common tree in this state. With lumbermen a spruce is a 
spruce, regardless of whether the botanist would call it black or 
white. All four of the plates of the spruces used in this 
paper, were kindly loaned me by Hon. William F. Fox, 
superintendent state forests, New York. 



White Spruce. 

Fig. J, Cone and leai'es. natural size. 
Fig. 2. A seed. 



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LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



Black Sp 



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fig.l Goneandlea ^ ^02 818 817 1 f 

Jn^. 2, A seed. 



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mm 




Exeter, N. H., February, 1897. 



